Stellar Styles: Home Product Boxes Reused as Table Lamps

Juice cartons and laundry soap containers are not what most people would call ‘pretty packaging’ – but poke enough holes in jut the right places, insert a light bulb and dim the overhead ceiling fixtures and you can tone down those bright colors into a muted, contemporary and binary light-and-dark table lamp.

Anke Weiss describes this craft work as a re-purposing of more than just a product – it is also an extension of the branded communication at the heart of the original design, a message that moves beyond marketing and yet still taps into the same psychological needs and desires we are originally intended to experience.

Regardless of the layered purpose and subtle intent of the artist, though, these are compelling projects in their own aesthetic light. By turning up and down the surrounding lighting the experience shifts as these accent pieces take on different purposes. In pitch black, only the pin-point perforations show as binary pixels of light. In-between conditions of illumination reveal parts of the original pattern as well as the artistic overlay, blurring the boundaries between the cardboard product packages and upcycled craft works.